JPG to TIFF

TIFF has been the workhorse of printing, publishing and archiving for decades. Print shops, newspapers, stock agencies, legal and medical document systems and fax servers often specify TIFF. If what you have is a set of JPG photos or scans, this tool converts them to TIFF in your browser, either one file per image or all of them combined into one multi-page TIFF.

Why some places insist on TIFF

TIFF is a container that stores images losslessly, supports several pages per file and is understood by professional software everywhere. A print shop that receives a TIFF knows the file will not be re-compressed by accident along the way. Archives value its long-standing, well-documented structure. Some government portals and fax workflows simply accept nothing else.

What converting a JPG gains

Being honest helps here: a TIFF made from a JPG contains exactly the JPG’s pixels, with any compression artifacts already in them. The quality does not improve. What you gain is a file that will not lose anything more when it is opened, edited and saved again, plus compatibility with workflows that require TIFF. If you have the original RAW or PNG, convert that instead for the best result.

Compression options

“Lossless Deflate compression” is on by default. It shrinks the file without changing a single pixel, using the same method Photoshop calls ZIP compression. Switch it off only if the receiving system demands uncompressed TIFF; the file then grows to about three bytes per pixel, roughly 36 MB for a 12-megapixel photo.

Combining images into a multi-page TIFF

Switch on “Combine into one multi-page TIFF” and every converted image becomes a page of a single file, in the order of the list. This is the classic way to send multi-page scans to fax gateways or document management systems, and to bundle a series of photos for an archive. Without the switch, each JPG becomes its own TIFF.

Color and transparency

The TIFF stores 8-bit RGB color, the same depth as the JPG. JPG has no transparency, so no alpha channel is written. The pages open in every TIFF-capable viewer, including Windows Photos, macOS Preview, GIMP, Affinity and Photoshop.

Resolution for printing

Printers care about pixels per inch. A photo needs about 300 pixels per inch at its printed size: a 3000 × 2000 pixel image prints sharply at 10 × 6.7 inches. If a print shop asks for a particular DPI value in the file, set it with the Image DPI Converter, which writes the resolution tags without touching the pixels.

Sizing down

Switch on “Limit size” to cap the longest side when a portal limits upload size or a fax system expects smaller pages. The image is reduced in high-quality halving steps before the TIFF is written.

Privacy for sensitive documents

Scans of contracts, IDs and medical records should not be uploaded to unknown servers. Everything here runs on your device, and no file leaves it.

Related tools

For lossless images that are smaller and widely supported, JPG to PNG is often enough. For transparent artwork, PNG to TIFF keeps the alpha channel. To turn TIFFs back into shareable JPGs, use TIFF to JPG; to make a PDF instead, JPG to PDF.